nixCraft π§If Rust is so secure and awesome, why haven't GNU or BSD utils been rewritten in Rust Lang?
Peter Mount@nixCraft I've heard that some are slowly being rewritten, but not many
Alex@nixCraft AFAIK linux kernel is introducing rust in new parts, not rewritting it. I think rewriting GNU or BSD utils in rust is not worth it, since not new developments are introduced and C is fast(er) and already done
GreenDotGuy@nixCraft possibly and at least partly because gcc's rust frontend is rather new? But also just inertia on the human side.
I'm curious to try daily-driving rustybox: https://github.com/samuela/rustybox
@nixCraft please, don't summon that daemon. don't you remember rule 34? What doesn't exist will the moment someone asks. there will be fanfic about it. there will be porn about it. PLEASE NO!
@nixCraft there are rust implementations of GNU and BSD tools, there are many different reasons why offical GNU /BSD utils remain written in C/c++. Since C/C++ has been around for so long Its a standard. Plus most of these tool are old and have been tested for a long time so many bugs have been worked out and security holes patched. Why write if it's not broken? Changes in standards and practices can take many many years to propagate. https://github.com/uutils/coreutils
^ rust implementation of GNU coreutil
^ rust implementation of GNU coreutil
Torsten 
nat
Mateus Melchiades 
@nixCraft top quality bait
Alexander Sosedkin 
@nixCraft not sure if sarcasm or ignorance
The Penguin of Evil@nixCraft Takes time. Also it's generally considered poor practice to rewrite code to a new supposedly more secure/robust standard if it is already of good provenance and has a history of being reliable. In fact many of the formal rulesets for writing secure or safety critical code actually say you shouldn't rewrite existing stuff to the standard unnecessarily
Joakim Fors@nixCraft if it works, dont ruin it
mirabilos@nixCraft could be that, while new things may be awesome, they also have downsides ans outright regressions.
Pids3c@nixCraft cos its probably too much work for devs to rewrite everything.
δΎηΆη¬ηΉ@nixCraft GNU coreutils has been rewritten in JavaScript, so JavaScript is a secure and awesome language? https://coreutils.js.org/
San D. Uno
pancake 
@nixCraft because core utils are so legacy, simple and old that makes no sense to use an overengineered compiler that barely runs on all the supported targets of these systems. Despite that fact there's an effort to have them in Rust but for obvious license reasons BSD and GNU wont use.